‘The Hero’s Journey’

‘The Hero’s Journey’

The ‘Slí an Chroí’ Centre, Kiltegan, Co. Wicklow, July 1st to July 7th, 2017.

There are still 2-3 vacant places on this workshop and a bursary may also be available.

Do you have a sense that there could be more to life than the way that you are living now? Do you experience an inner yearning for transformation? Paul Rebillot’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ workshop could help you respond to that call from your deeper self. The workshop – an exciting group structure combining classical Gestalt process and groupwork with elements of myth, theatre, ritual, music, art and movement – is a modern-day Rite of Passage. While each participant will gain their own individual insights from the process, at its core the ‘Hero’s Journey’ focuses on the tension that can arise between the profound attraction of that inner ‘Call to Adventure’ and the difficulties that many of us experience in responding to the prospect of change. The workshop has a particular relevance in a time such as now when so much that seemed to be set in stone is being shaken to its foundations.

Significant change challenges us to move from one level of being to another and such a step into the unknown can call up strong resistance. Traditional societies used Rites of Passage – overseen by a ritual master or shaman – to ceremonialise, celebrate and guide members of the community on their journey through important life stages such as birth, puberty, adulthood, marriage, eldership and death. Importantly, these rituals also taught the initiates that change was part of the normal order of things and showed them ways of dealing with it. Responding to what he saw as modern society’s need for help in facing change, Paul Rebillot drew on his professional skills as actor, director, musician and psychotherapist – and on his personal experience of spiritual and psychological crisis – to develop a rite of passage for our own times, a blueprint – based on the universal monomyth of the Hero’s Journey – for dealing with change and transformation.

Entering the Hero’s Journey process we come to discover the Hero within us and – having heard a Call to Adventure – set off with her or him on a journey of personal exploration. Leaving the Home Ground of our every-day life our Heroic self encounters his or her opposite, our inner Demon of Resistance. We experience a confrontation between these two aspects of ourselves, a resolution, and an integration. Returning to everyday reality, we take stock of how this inner transformation has changed our feelings about ourselves, our home, our work, and our beloved – and then begin to explore how the transformation can continue to work in our lives beyond the workshop.

PAUL REBILLOT was born in 1931 in Detroit, Michigan. Following a successful academic and professional career in the performing arts as musician, writer, actor, director and teacher he trained as a Gestalt psychotherapist with Dick Price (an influential early pupil of Fritz Perls) at the Esalen Institute where he also came into contact with the mythologist Joseph Campbell. From these two influences – together with his own uniquely creative insights – Paul developed the ‘Hero’s Journey’, the first of a unique series of therapeutic structures which drew on both his training in Gestalt psychotherapy and on his background in the world of music and theatre. Annually from 1991 to 2008 Paul presented a series of very successful workshops in Ireland, among them ‘The Hero’s Journey’, ‘The Lover’s Journey’, ‘Owning the Shadow’ and ‘Death and Resurrection’. In March 2008, he retired from work in Europe and he died in February 2010.

THE FOOL’S DANCE GESTALT COMPANY – PAUL REBILLOT SCHOOL IN IRELAND is a group of people in Ireland who have worked for many years with Paul Rebillot, are graduates of his Advanced Training and who came together after Paul’s retirement with the aim of continuing his transformative work in Ireland.

FURTHER INFORMATION: This workshop is suitable for anyone with an interest in self-exploration or personal development. No previous experience of Gestalt psychotherapy is required or assumed.

To request a more detailed printed workshop brochure or for any other queries e-mail to Fergus Lalor at fergus.lalor@upcmail.ie or telephone 021-4505711 (answering machine).